"Mom it's Vacation....."

Day 7 ,

Saturday…because it says so on the floor of the elevator….It is Punta Arenas..the most southerly city of its size…whatever that means,..

A day of Penguins, Penguins and more Penguins….We left Porte Montt and sailed to a Glacier..called “Sku“, the kid was thrilled once she was up and looked at the snow covered peaks of the Andes…we ran to the front of the ship where the minute the exitement was over she was freezing…see picture…she started to go back to the cabin but became mesmorized and started to take pictures lots of them. It was a glacier, with the fear of sounding jaded, the ones in Alaska if there are still any left are significantly, monstorily better…there are more and bigger in Alaska, at least last time I saw it…Here this one was, lonely all by itself but since kid studied these it was exciting.

Left glacier and into the Straits of Magellan. Learned more about Magellan how he found this place and died face in the sand in the Phillipines urging his troops…well all 17 of whom were left to scadadly (no spelling for it in spell check) back to the ship…Well he found the channel and until the Panama Canal was built there were 1000 ships a year that went through here and there is a 1000 ships a year that still go through it.

Today we got up when it was still dark…kid whiney voiced….“It’s vacation…whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do we have to get up so early”.

PENGUINS!….of we went by boat, bus , boat.. hoping all the time that there were at least a few penguiinos still left. Most of them are gone by April* we are told….after 2 hours by boat we arrive…. Think D-D invasion but this time is a couple of hundred of tourist poised with cameras, of varying focal lengths decending on a tiny island and little creatures about 18 inches tall. Some armed with the equivalent of I would say grenade launchers , foot and a half long weapons, others with simple point and shoots…There we were ready to run off the ramp eager to see our first penguin. Everyone united in one thought…I hope they are still there.

As we stormed the beach of this tiny island we were not disappointed because coming directly to us was a waddling group of about 5 tuxedo clad Penguins...Funny little guys…these are not the huge ones, not the ones with pretty colors …need to go to Anartica for that, but we were very happy with our little black and white Magellan Penguins. Yes there they were, not the 120,000 or so at the height of the season but enough for a good look and some fun pictures.

They are a curious bunch and are protected only by yellow tape but often choose to ignore it since I guess no one has ever told them not to cross the barrier..They come almost right up to you and if you happen to sit next to one in a burrow…they could care less…hey they’ve seen tons of tourists and since we are all warned not to touch, they bite I guess nothing for them to be afraid of. They often walk in groups, in a line one waddling after another of to nowhere other than to get a better look at us. They are waiting out the change of their feathers…once the feathers become seaworthy with the help of a little oil gland, they congregate on the beach until the mood strikes them and then again in groups of 40 or so take off swimming hundreds of miles to meet the kids on the same island each year.

Well and of course there has to be at least one picture of a decaying boat...cheers.


*It seems that they come here in November and lay eggs in burrows, chicks are born and about 90 days later, the chicks take off in groups of 40 or so and head back to the island where their parent came from… one knows why or how … many miles to the coast of Uruguay or Brazil for the winter. They return to the same island every year..but how do the chicks who have never been there before know where they are going?,,No one knows the answer. The parents stay, shed old feathers and then in groups of 40 also go to the same island where the chicks went before.